This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue on argumentative patterns in discourse, more in particular on argumentative patterns with pragmatic argumentation as a main argument that are prototypical of argumentative discourse in certain communicative activity types in the political, the legal, the medical, and the academic domain. It situates the studies of argumentative patterns reported in these papers in the pragma-dialectical research program. In order to be able to do so, it is first explained in which consecutive (...) stages the pragma-dialectical theorizing has developed, what the study of argumentative patterns involves, and why the identification of argumentative patterns represents a vital stage in the development of pragma-dialectics. The description of the theoretical innovations that are introduced and the exposition of their relationship with the standard and extended pragma-dialectical theory create a conceptual and terminological framework for understanding the background and the rationale of the current research projects. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

In this article I address the following question: When are reformulations in argumentative criticisms reasonable and when do they become fallacious straw men? Following ideas developed in the integrated version of pragma-dialectics, I approach argumentation as an element of agonistic exchanges permeated by arguers’ strategic manoeuvring aimed at effectively defeating the opponent with reasonable means. I propose two basic context-sensitive criteria for deciding on the reasonableness of reformulations: precision of the rules for interpretation (precise vs. loose) and general expectation of (...) cooperativeness (critical vs. constructive). On the basis of analysis of examples taken from online political discussions, I argue that in some contexts, especially those that are critical and loose, what might easily be classified as a straw man following conventional treatment should be taken as a harsh, yet reasonable, strategic argumentative criticism. (shrink)

According to van Eemeren, argumentation theory is a hybrid discipline, because it requires a multidisciplinary, if not interdisciplinary approach, combining descriptive and normative insights. He points out that modern argumentation theorists give substance to the discipline by relying either on a dialectical perspective, concentrating on the reasonableness of argumentation, or on a rhetorical perspective, concentrating on its effectiveness. Both the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective are interpreted in ways related to how they were viewed by Aristotle, but in modern argumentation (...) theory the relationship between the two, captured in Aristotle’s term antistrophos, is lost. According to van Eemeren, this relationship, which he considers crucial to a full-fledged argumentation theory, has been recovered in extended pragma-dialectics with the help of the theoretical notion of ‘strategic manoeuvring.’. (shrink)

This paper describes the development of pragma-dialectics as a theory of argumentative discourse. First the development of the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is explained, with the rules that are to be complied with in order to avoid fallacies from occurring. Then the integration is discussed of rhetorical insight in the dialectical framework. In this endeavour, the concept of strategic manoeuvring is explained that allows for a more refined and more profoundly justified analysis of argumentative discourse and a better (...) identification of fallacies. The paper ends with a brief overview of current research projects. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown is that although poisoning the well has generally been treated as a species of ad hominem fallacy, when you try to analyze the fallacy using ad hominem schemes, even by supplementing with related schemes like argument from position to know, the analysis ultimately fails. The main argument of the paper is taken up with proving this negative claim by applying these schemes to examples of arguments associated with the fallacy of poisoning the well. Although (...) there is a positive finding in this quest, in that poisoning the well is shown to be based on and associated with these forms of argument in interesting ways, the paper in the end is led to the conclusion that the fallacy is irreducibly dialectical. Poisoning the well is thus analyzed as a tactic to silence an opponent violating her right to put forward arguments on an issue both parties have agreed to discuss at the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. It is concluded that it is a special form of strategic attack used by one party in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion to improperly shut down the capability of the other party for putting forward arguments of the kind needed to properly move the discussion forward. (shrink)

By presenting a case study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this article introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, that is, the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and journalists make use of contextual frames in the apparently neutral genre of news reporting to (...) propose specific interpretations of the facts at issue, which become the basis for explicit comments and editorials. To show how this works, I investigate in detail a case of newspaper coverage of a complex episode using the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring and the Argumentum Model of Topics to analyse argument schemes. I show that, in the use of contextual frames, there is a prominent relation between presentational devices and topical potential; contextual frames provide the implicit material premises which are at the basis of argumentations through which newspapers interpret and comment on the news. (shrink)

Political debate is a distinctive domain in argumentation, characterized by these features: it is about proposals for action, not about propositions that may have a truth value; there may be good arguments on both sides; neither the proposal nor its rejection follows by necessity or inference; the pros and the cons generally cannot, being multidimensional and hence incommen- surable, be aggregated in an objective way; each audience member must subjectively compare and balance arguments on the two sides; eventual consensus between (...) the debaters is not a reasonable requirement. From all this follows a view of the rhetor’s special obligation in democratic, deliberative rhetoric on which it becomes crucial, in the interest of the audience, that political debaters acknowledge good arguments on the opposite side and explain why, on balance, they deem the arguments favoring their own side to be stronger. (shrink)

Van Eemeren and Houtlosser observe that Walton’s (and Walton and Krabbe’s) notion of ‘dialogue type’ involves a mixture of an empirical notion on a par with a speech event or activity type and a normative notion such as the model of a critical discussion. Then they discuss Walton’s contextual analysis of fallacies as illegitimate dialectical shifts of dialogue types and offer an alternative in which both the empirical and the normative dimension are given their due.

According to van Eemeren, argumentation theory is a hybrid discipline, because it requires a multidisciplinary, if not interdisciplinary approach, combining descriptive and normative insights. He points out that modern argumentation theorists give substance to the discipline by relying either on a dialectical perspective, concentrating on the reasonableness of argumentation, or on a rhetorical perspective, concentrating on its effectiveness. Both the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective are interpreted in ways related to how they were viewed by Aristotle, but in modern argumentation (...) theory the relationship between the two, captured in Aristotle’s term antistrophos, is lost. According to van Eemeren, this relationship, which he considers crucial to a full-fledged argumentation theory, has been recovered in extended pragma-dialectics with the help of the theoretical notion of ‘strategic manoeuvring.’. (shrink)

The introduction of the concept of strategic maneuvering into the pragma-dialectical theory makes it possible to formulate testable hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of argumentative moves that are made in argumentative discourse. After summarizing the standard pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, van Eemeren, Garssen, and Meuffels explain what the extension of the pragma-dialectical approach with strategic maneuvering involves and discuss the fallacies in terms of the extended pragma-dialectical approach as derailments of strategic maneuvering. Then they give an empirical interpretation of the extended (...) pragma-dialectical model in which they report the testing of three hypotheses which formulate preliminary conditions for effectiveness research within the framework of the extended pragma-dialectical theory and the results of the tests they consecutively carried out. (shrink)

How do Dutch people let each other know that they disagree? What do they say when they want to resolve their difference of opinion by way of an argumentative discussion? In what way do they convey that they are convinced by each other’s argumentation? How do they criticize each other’s argumentative moves? Which words and expressions do they use in these endeavors? By answering these questions this short essay provides a brief inventory of the language of argumentation in Dutch.

Arguing that our attachment to Aristotelian modes of discourse makes a revision of their conceptual foundations long overdue, the author proposes the consideration of unacknowledged factors that play a central role in argument itself. These are in particular the subjective imprint and the dynamics of argumentation. Their inclusion in a four-dimensional framework and the focus on thesis validity allow for a more realistic view of our discourse practice. Exhaustive analyses of fascinating historical and contemporary arguments are provided. These range from (...) Columbus’s advocacy of the Western Passage to India, over the trial of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, to today’s highly charged controversies surrounding euthanasia and embryo research. Excavating foundational issues such as the purpose of argument itself and the contested role of argument as a generator of knowledge, the book culminates in a discussion of the relationship between rationality and reasonableness and criticizes the restrictions of ‘rational’ argument relying on fixed logical, economic or cultural criteria that in reality are mutable. Here, a true, open argument requires the infusion of Paul Lorenzen’s principle of ‘transsubjectivity’, which recognizes but transcends the partiality of the individual and which can be seen in the pragmatic and expanding consensus that humanity can control itself to safeguard the future of a fragile, damaged world. (shrink)

During the past thirty years the pragma-dialectical theorizing has developed in various steps from designing an abstract ideal model for critical discussion to examining strategic manoeuvring in the various argumentative activity types in which argumentative discourse manifests itself in argumentative reality. The response to the theoretical proposals that have been made includes, next to approval, also various kinds of criticisms. This paper explores the nature and thrust of these criticisms. In doing so, a distinction is made between criticisms concerning the (...) dialectical and the pragmatic dimensions of pragma-dialectics, the scope of the theory, the rhetorical dimension and moral quality, the treatment of the fallacies, and the epistemic dimension. (shrink)

The author gives an analysis of the strategic manoeuvring in the justification of legal decisions from a pragma-dialectical perspective by showing how a judge tries to reconcile dialectical and rhetorical aims. On the basis of an analysis and evaluation of the argumentation given by the US Supreme Court in the famous Holy Trinity case, it is shown how in a case in which the judge wants to make an exception to a legal rule for the concrete case tries to meet (...) the dialectical reasonableness norm by seeing to it that his standpoint is sufficiently defended according to the requirements of the burden of proof of a judge in a rational critical discussion and how he tries at the same time to be rhetorically convincing for the legal audience by presenting the decision as a choice that is in line with the argumentation schemes and starting points that can be considered as accepted by the legal community in the US and by the US community as a whole. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibilities for strategic maneuvering of the argumentative technique that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (The New Rhetoric. A Treatise on Argumentation, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame/London, 1969) called dissociation. After an exploration of the general possibilities that dissociation may have for enhancing critical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, the use of dissociation in the successive stages of a critical discussion is examined. For each stage, first, the dialectical moves that dissociation can be employed in are specified, then, (...) the specific ways in which dissociation contributes to fulfilling the dialectical tasks that are associated with these moves are delineated, and, finally, the rhetorical gain that␣dissociation can bring in the fulfillment of these tasks is discussed. Some general conclusions are drawn for research that aims at understanding the potential of an argumentative technique for strategic maneuvering. (shrink)

This article combines a pragma-dialectical conception of argumentation, a sociological conception of legitimacy and a sociological theory of the political field. In particular, it draws on the theorization of the political field developed by Pierre Bourdieu and tries to determine what new insights into the concept of strategic maneuvering might be offered by a sociological analysis of the political field. I analyze a speech made by the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu, following his suspension by Parliament in April 2007. I (...) suggest that the argument developed in this speech can be regarded as an example of adjudication and I discuss its specificity as an adjudication in the political field in an electoral campaign. I also try to relate legitimation as political strategy to strategic maneuvering oriented to meeting the contradictory demands of the political field, which I see—following Bourdieu—as involving a double political game, a game of democratic representation and a game of power. (shrink)

Questions represent a crucial tool of interaction between parents and children from a very early age. This study aims to investigate which function – argumentative or explanatory – most characterizes Why-questions asked by children to their parents in a natural setting such as mealtimes at home. Why-questions asked by 13 children – eight girls and five boys aged between three and seven years – coming from 10 middle- to upper-middle-class Swiss and Italian families with a high socio-cultural level were analyzed. (...) In the corpus, the explanatory function largely characterizes children’s Why-questions. Questions we observed play fundamentally an educational role, since they favor the acquisition of new information and the transmission from parents to children of parental behavioral models. The argumentative Why-questions, less frequently asked by children in our sample, are also important from an educational point of view. By these questions children challenge their parents to make clear the reasons behind their opinions, suggestions, rules and prescriptions, which are often largely implicit. Altogether, the results of this study indicate that both the explanatory and argumentative types of children’s Why-questions have a knowledge-seeking function, that is, children asking such questions are seeking knowledge of something. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role that the stylistic device of praeteritio (or paralipsis) can play in arguers’ attempts to reconcile their rhetorical with their dialectical aims by manoeuvring strategically when carrying out particular discussion moves of the dialectical procedure for resolving a dispute. First, attention will be paid to the ways in which praeteritio can be realized in discourse. Next, an analysis is given of the effects the use of praeteritio may have as a result of the presentational means that (...) are employed. This analysis will be used to establish the possibilities for strategic manoeuvring with this device in the different stages of an argumentative discussion. Finally, an indication is given of how the types of strategic manoeuvring that a praeteritio can be instrumental in may derail, and in which violations of the rules for critical discussion such derailed manoeuvrings may result. (shrink)

Christian Kock’s essays show the essential interconnectedness of practical reasoning, rhetoric and deliberative democracy. They constitute a unique contribution to argumentation theory that draws on – and criticizes – the work of philosophers, rhetoricians, political scientists and other argumentation theorists. It puts rhetoric in the service of modern democracies by drawing attention to the obligations of politicians to articulate arguments and objections that citizens can weigh against each other in their deliberations about possible courses of action.

In argumentation, as elsewhere, speakers strategically engage favourable presumptions by manifestly making themselves accountable for their communicative efforts. Such strategies provide the addressee with reasons to regard the speaker as accountable in specific ways and, via that regard for the speaker, with situation-specific rationales for responding positively to what the speaker says. This paper identifies some resources available to arguers for strengthening, elaborating, and focusing such special presumptions. The paper offers an analysis of Barbara Jordan’s “Statement on the Articles of (...) Impeachment” as illustrative of these resources for strengthening a speaker’s ethos. (shrink)

In a critical discussion, interlocutors can strategically maneuver by shading their expressed degree of standpoint commitment for rhetorical effect. When is such strategic shading reasonable, and when does it cross the line and risk fallacious derailment of the discussion? Analysis of President George W. Bush’s 2002–2003 prewar commentary on Iraq provides an occasion to explore this question and revisit Douglas Ehninger’s distinction between argumentation as coercive correction and argumentation as a person-risking enterprise. Points of overlap between Ehninger’s account and pragma-dialectical (...) argumentation theory suggest avenues for harmonization of rhetorical and dialectical perspectives on argumentation. Out of this conceptual convergence comes theoretical resources for understanding strategic maneuvering, by accounting for ways that discussants exploit gaps between their externalized and actual discussion attitude. As such higher-order strategic maneuvering played a major role in the 2003 Iraq prewar discourse failure, perspicacious understanding of this particular argumentative maneuver carries practical, as well as theoretical import. (shrink)

A strong argument culture is characterized by at least five productive tensions, between: commitment and contingency, partisanship and restraint, personal conviction and sensitivity to the audience, reasonableness and subjectivity, and decision and non-closure. Differences in how communities manage these tensions explain why there are multiple argument cultures and, hence, why we need to understand arguing both within and among different cultures. The paper elaborates these five productive tensions, offers some examples of argument cultures that negotiate them in various ways, and (...) considers what it means to argue across cultures in a world that is both increasingly diverse and increasingly atomized. (shrink)

From a decision theoretic perspective, arguments stem from decisions made by arguers. Despite some promising results, this approach remains underdeveloped in argumentation theories, mostly because it is assumed to be merely descriptive. This assumption is mistaken: considering arguments as the product of decisions brings into play various normative models of rational choice. The challenge is rather to reconcile strategic rationality with other normative constraints relevant for argumentation, such as inferential validity and dialectical appropriateness.

To illustrate the development of argumentation theory, the paper traces the journey of the pragma-dialectical theory as it widened its scope, step by step, from an abstract model of critical discussion to the complexities of actual argumentative discourse. It describes how, having contextualized, empiricalized and formalized their approach, pragma-dialecticians are now putting the theory’s analytical instruments to good use in identifying prototypical argumentative patterns in specific communicative activity types in the various communicative domains. This means that they can now start (...) answering the crucial question about the typical characteristics of their discourse asked by interested lawyers, politicians, academics and other practitioners of argumentation. (shrink)

A key and continuing concern within the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is how to account for effective persuasion disciplined by dialectical rationality. Currently, van Eemeren and Houtlosser offer one response to this concern in the form of strategic manoeuvring. This paper offers a prior/passing theory of communicative interaction as a supplement to the strategic manoeuvring approach. Our use of a prior/passing model investigates how a difference of opinion can be resolved while both dialectic obligations of reasonableness and rhetorical ambitions of (...) argumentative success are simultaneously accommodated. The paper explores the model with particular reference to the pragma-dialectical rules of critical discussion, strategic manoeuvring and fallacious reasoning. (shrink)

This book contains 20 essays tracing the work of David Zarefsky, a leading North American scholar of argumentation from a rhetorical perspective. The essays cohere around 4 general themes: objectives for studying argumentation rhetorically, approaches to rhetorical study of argumentation, patterns and schemes of rhetorical argumentation, and case studies illustrating the potential of studying argumentation rhetorically. These articles are drawn from across Zarefsky’s 45-year career. Many of these articles originally appeared in publications that are difficult to access today, and this (...) collection brings the reader up to date on the topic. Zarefsky’s scholarship focuses on the role of language in political argumentation, the ways in which argumentation creates public knowledge and belief, the influence of framing and context on what is said and understood, the deployment of particular patterns and schemes of argumentation in public reasoning, and the influence of debate on politics and governance. All these topics are addressed in this book. Each of the conceptual essays includes brief application to specific cases, and five extended case studies are also presented in this volume. The case studies cover different themes: two explore famous political debates, the third focuses on presidential rhetoric across the course of United States history, the fourth on the arguments for liberalism at a time of political polarization, and the fifth on the contemporary effort to engage the United States with the Muslim world. This book is of interest to scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, law, philosophy of law, and legal history. The range of topics and concepts addressed, the interplay of concepts and cases and the unifying perspective of rhetorical argumentation make this book a valuable read for students of argumentative practice, whether rhetorically or otherwise. (shrink)

As an introduction to the special issue on Perspectives on Strategic Maneuvering, this article provides a synthetic recapitulation of the various steps that were taken in developing the pragma-dialectical theory of strategic maneuvering. First, the concept of strategic maneuvering is described as a means to reconcile the simultaneous pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical aims. Second, strategic maneuvering is related to the various kinds of argumentative activity types in which it takes place. Third, the concept of dialectical profiles is discussed and (...) the parameters that are pertinent to distinguishing between different types of strategic maneuvering. Fourth, the fallacies are viewed as derailment of strategic maneuvering. Fifth, as a case in point, strategic maneuvering with inconsistency is examined. (shrink)

I characterize the deductivist ideal of justification and, following to a great extent Toulmin’s work The Uses of Argument, I try to explain why this ideal is erroneous. Then I offer an alternative model of justification capable of making our claims to knowledge about substantial matters sound and reasonable. This model of justification will be based on a conception of justification as the result of good argumentation, and on a model of argumentation which is a pragmatic linguistic reconstruction of Toulmin’s (...) model of argument. (shrink)

This paper scrutinizes some peculiarities of the culture of Internet argumentation: it is a qualitative pragma-dialectical study of different strategies arguers employ to question or attack argumentation of their opponents in online political discussion forums. The basic assumption of the paper is that this particular context of argumentation—or: argumentative activity type—creates special opportunities and constraints for critical reactions regarding propositional content and relevance of argumentation. These opportunities and constraints, it is argued, may lead online discussions to being endless, yet not (...) necessarily fruitless from an argumentative perspective. (shrink)

Leading contemporary argumentation theories such as those of Ralph Johnson, van Eemeren and Houtlosser, and Tindale, in their attempt to address rhetoric, tend to define rhetorical argumentation with reference to (a) the rhetorical arguer’s goal (to persuade effectively), and (b) the means he employs to do so. However, a central strand in the rhetorical tradition itself, led by Aristotle, and arguably the dominant view, sees rhetorical argumentation as defined with reference to the domain of issues discussed. On that view, the (...) domain of rhetorical argumentation is centered on choice of action in the civic sphere, and the distinctive nature of issues in this domain is considered crucial. Hence, argumentation theories such as those discussed, insofar as they do not see rhetoric as defined by its distinctive domain, apply an understanding of rhetoric that is historically inadequate. It is further suggested that theories adopting this understanding of rhetoric risk ignoring important distinctive features of argumentation about action. (shrink)

This paper discusses the ways in which argumentative discourse prototypically manifests itself. As a consequence of the institutional preconditions applying to the strategic manoeuvring taking place in specific communicative activity types, certain context-dependent argumentative patterns of standpoints, argument schemes and argumentation structures can be observed. Because of their interest in the extent to which argumentative discourse is context-dependent, pragma-dialecticians are out to discover such specific patterns. As a case in point, the authors discuss some institutionally motivated argumentative patterns in parliamentary (...) debate in the European Parliament. (shrink)

This paper discusses some of the ways recent models have brought rhetoric into argumentation theory. In particular, it explores the rationale for and role of rhetoric in the strategic maneuvering project of pragma-dialectics and compares it with the author’s own implementation of rhetorical features. A case is made for considering the active ways audiences influence the strategies of arguers and for seeing the role of rhetoric in argumentation as both fundamental and reasonable on its own terms.

Over the past decade, the ideal model of shared decision-making has been increasingly promoted as the preferred standard of doctor-patient communication in medical consultation. The model advocates a treatment decision-making process in which the doctor and his patient are considered coequal partners that carefully negotiate the treatment options available in order to ultimately reach a treatment decision that is mutually shared. Thereby, the model notably leaves room for—and stimulates—argumentative discussions to arise in the context of medical consultation. A paradigm example (...) of a discussion that often emerges between doctors and their patients concerns antibiotics as a method of treatment for what is presumed to be a viral infection. Whereas the doctor will generally not encourage treatment with antibiotics, patients oftentimes prefer the medicine to other methods of treatment. In this paper, two cases of such antibiotic-related discussions in consultation are studied using insights gained in the extended pragma-dialectical theory to argumentation. It is examined how patient and physician maneuver strategically in order to maintain a balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, as well as an equilibrium between patient participation and evidence-based medication, while arguing a case for and against antibiotics respectively. (shrink)

Taking Blair’s recent contribution to the debate about the triad as its starting point, the paper discusses and challenges the effort to reduce the intricate relationship between rhetoric, dialectic, and logic to a single criterion or watertight trichotomy. I argue that such efforts obscure the complexities within the fields, their differences being partly due to disciplinary traditions. They neglect the intermingling properties of the fields as well as the possibilities for theoretical bridging between them.

I distinguish four current strategies for integrating a rhetorical perspective within normative models for argumentation. Then I propose and argue for a fifth one by defending a conception of acts of arguing as having a rhetorical dimension that provides conditions for characterizing good argumentation, understood as argumentation that justifies a target-claim.

In this paper I investigate what role the stylistic device of hyperbole can play in arguers’ strategic maneuvers in the argumentation stage of a discussion. First, I give an analysis of the general effects the use of hyperbole may have in argumentative discourse. Next, I specify how hyperbole may contribute to arguers’ dialectical and rhetorical aims in the argumentation stage of a discussion.

Persuasiveness is generally equated with the speaker’s ability to change the recipient’s attitude. In this paper, I want to show that by using van Eemeren and Houtlosser’s theory of strategic manoeuvring a view of persuasiveness can be found that complements the above conception. Starting from the pragma-dialectical definition of conclusiveness, I argue that persuasiveness depends on the ability of the arguer to confer on his argumentation the appearance of conclusiveness.

This paper will examine chronically derailed church-state separation arguments in order to explore the extent to which rhetorical and dialectical approaches can be reconciled. I will consider broader conceptions of rhetoric than those employed to date in studies of strategic manoeuvring. While rhetorical appeals, such as claims of persecution, can terminally polarize church-state arguments, they may also serve as means for recovering from dialectical derailment.

I make a distinction between a traditional conception of Rhetoric as a corpus of practical knowledge to improve persuasive abilities, and a more contemporary conception of Rhetoric as a hermeneutic discipline for dealing with communicative activities as a means of influence. I argue that the key difference between both conceptions is whether or not they deal with the rhetorical properties of discourses as a matter of speakers’ intentions.